A plague on both your houses: how Ukip is worrying Labour as well as the Conservatives

Talking to various Labour people earlier this week, I was struck by the return of the party’s perennial worry: what to do about the concerns of skilled working-class voters on issues like immigration, crime and welfare.

From the backbenches to the Shadow Cabinet, there are people who worry that Labour under Ed Miliband doesn’t have the same grip on those voters that it did under Tony Blair. Even people who support Ed M, think he’s doing a good job and admire his work on cost-of-living issues privately confess to concerns here.

What’s curious about this is that the Conservatives are worrying about pretty much the same thing. Essentially, how to win the votes of people who drive vans for a living, people who earn money but not much, people who fear that their family is getting worse off, people who worry about the state of their local community.

The reason to worry about those people is clear: they switch votes more often than others, making the seats where they live marginal and winnable. A lot of those seats are in the Midlands and the north-west of England. Others are around the M25. Just as in 2010, that’s where the 2015 general election will be fought.

What does it tell us that both parties are worrying about these voters? Surely if one side is worried, the other should be happy? Once upon a time, yes. But this is no longer a two-sided game: there are other players at the table.

Rob Hayward, a polling analyst and former Conservative MP, has kindly sent me this fascinating table, based on calculations he did using YouGov’s regular tracker poll results over the last sixth months:

NovemberCon: 32.4 Lab: 42.4 LD: 9.4 Others: 15.8

DecemberCon: 31.8 Lab: 42.6 LD: 10.0 Others: 15.6

JanuaryCon: 32.6 Lab: 42.0 LD: 11.0 Others: 14.0

FebruaryCon: 31.2 Lab: 42.6 LD: 11.0 Others: 15.2

MarchCon: 31.0 Lab: 40.8 LD: 11.2 Others: 16.8

AprilCon: 31.8 Lab: 40.0 LD: 10.6 Others: 17.8

Sharp-eyed readers will, of course, spot tentative signs of something interesting going on: while Labour may be sliding back towards 40 per cent, the Conservative vote remains stuck at around 32 per cent. So if Labour really is slipping, the Tories aren’t gaining.

Who is? Of course, it’s the “Others”, aka the UK Independence Party, whose number has risen gently.

In Mr Hayward’s view, this suggests two things:

First, Ukip is not a problem solely for the Conservatives. It’s a problem for Labour too. And second, it suggests weakness in the Labour vote, and illustrates how much further they have to go, especially among the white working class.

Westminster is currently looking forward with varying degrees of trepidation to next week’s English local elections. The headline story from those elections is likely to be Conservative misery over gains for Labour and Ukip. But — as John Spellar's comments in the Mirror today underline — the contest between Labour and Ukip could be worth watching too.

Longer term, the prospect of Ukip gains from Labour raise all sorts of questions about the 2015 election, but that’s a story for another day.